Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/92

70 simple रि, which saves a great deal of trouble and confusion. Marathi and Oṛiya, in their desire to be very Sanskritic, introduce this letter; but the vulgar have turned it into ru in pronunciation, and in Oṛiya the character for this sound is used for रु and रू. In Gujarati also रु is substituted for ṛi.

Inasmuch as a in Bengali has become o, so ai ऐ becomes oi, and au becomes ou. It is almost impossible to convey by any written symbols the exact sounds of these vowels to the ear. Oṛiya has the same peculiarity. The two sounds are fairly represented by the accent of an Irishman in speaking of his native country as "Ould Oireland"; that is to say, there is a grasseyant or half-drawling tone in their pronunciation. This, however, is not considered correct by purists, who prefer to sound these vowels as in Sanskrit, and would say baidh, बैध, not, with the vulgar, boidh.

In some instances in Bengali the vowel ए e has a short harsh sound, like that of English a in hat. Thus एक "one," sounds yack or ack.

§ 22. In the pronunciation of the consonants there are a few peculiarities of a local and dialectic sort, which require notice. The palatal letters, as might be expected, display many divergencies of pronunciation. It is strange that those sounds so simple to an English mouth, the plain ch च and j ज, should apparently present such difficulties to other nations. In Europe the Germans, having used their j for य, and their ch for خ, or for a sound not representable by English letters, have had to fall back upon all sorts of combinations to represent ज. They write it dsch and च tsch; and of late they have got to ḱ for च and ǵ for ज, a characteristically logical, but I fear I must add also a characteristically unintelligible, method of expression. The French have turned their j into a half-z or ژ, and to get ज they have to write dj; so also, having turned ch into ش sh, they are obliged to write tch for च. The Italians,